England was a World Cup winner after all

England bowed out in the 2026 World Cup semi-finals, disappointing a nation that has waited 60 years to appear in a second final. Never mind: Time may not heal all wounds, but money is a consolation.

Another near miss on the sporting field should not overshadow the financial positives for the game back home.

A side effect of the riches reaped by FIFA and its main host, the US, may be to push some more air into the Premier League’s gravity-defying balloon.

Early signs of buoyancy include reports that a consortium backed by the family of Indian billionaire Lakshmi Mittal is in talks to buy a minority stake in Liverpool FC that would value the club at as much as US$6 billion (S$7.8 billion). Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos is said to have held discussions on joining the group.

Meanwhile, the transfer record for a British player has been broken twice since the tournament kicked off in June, with Morgan Rogers’ £117 million (S$201 million) move to Chelsea from Aston Villa surpassing by £1 million the fee Manchester City agreed to pay for Nottingham Forest’s Elliot Anderson.

Elsewhere, the Thai owners of Leicester City – which won the Premier League a decade ago but has now slipped into the third tier of English football – are exploring a sale of the club, according to the Financial Times.

The motivation here might be distress more than rising valuations, but the timing nevertheless suggests opportune conditions in the World Cup’s afterglow.

The 2026 tournament was a more valuable showcase for Premier League talent than Qatar four years earlier. The league supplied a record 182 players to the competition, and its stars were among the standout performers.

Spanish midfielder Rodri, of Manchester City, was named the tournament’s best player. His club teammate Erling Haaland of Norway, the Premier League’s top striker, became a cultural sensation in the US not only for the goals that knocked out Brazil but also for his fashion sense. 

A total of 11 Premier League players took to the field for the final between Spain and Argentina, up from seven in Qatar. Other than England reaching the final, there are not many outcomes that would have provided a better shop window.

More importantly, the tournament took place in the crucial North American market. The most significant legacy of the 2026 edition may be what it says about the extent to which football fans will tolerate a more extractive business model. 

Ticket prices that were multiples of those for past tournaments caused outrage and calls for boycotts; predatory transport and food-and-drink costs added to the indignation.

FIFA, the sport’s global governing body, expanded the event to 48 teams from 32 and inserted hydration breaks into each half, which broadcasters filled with advertising. Few stones were left unturned in the effort to squeeze extra revenue out of the world’s most popular sport.

And yet, despite all the controversy, the World Cup was both a sporting and business success. Following its conclusion, FIFA increased its estimate for the current four-year revenue cycle by US$2 billion to US$15 billion (the quadrennial tournament accounts for the vast majority of that).

It is not done, either: the association is planning to raise money from external investors for a US$20 billion commercial vehicle to capitalise on the World Cup’s momentum, Bloomberg News reported on July 28.

Stadiums were generally packed and the final drew a record US television audience. In summary, football’s capacity for more aggressive commercial management was tested in the world’s most developed and sophisticated sports market and was not found wanting.

All this is of particular relevance to the Premier League, the world’s richest and most-watched domestic football competition and a recipient of significant US investment in recent years.

About half the league’s 20 clubs have some level of American ownership. Much of this investment was premised partly on the idea that teams would become more profitable as commercially astute business practices enabled them to monetise the English game’s huge global audience (Manchester United alone claims to have more than one billion supporters worldwide). 

The thesis has run into headwinds including a cooling in the market for broadcast rights, though, causing some signs of disenchantment. 

Premier League valuations have long defied gravity. Three-quarters of clubs are money-losing, with the league posting aggregate pre-tax losses for years. The deficit reached £948 million in 2024-2025, on revenue that rose to £6.8 billion.

The social and cultural context of English football is very different from the more explicitly commercial US sports market, making profit maximisation challenging.

As in many other football-centric countries, clubs are viewed as heritage and community assets as well as business enterprises. That makes ticket price increases, for example, a sensitive subject.

An effort five years ago to replicate the profit-underpinning US franchise model with a European Super League – supported by American-owned Liverpool, Manchester United and Arsenal – provoked a huge backlash and was swiftly abandoned.

The other key factor holding back profitability is the spending arms race.

Record transfer fees are a double-edged sword: a sign of liquidity and confidence, but also of an out-of-control cost structure that tightened rules have yet to restrain. English clubs invested more in players this summer than the next four biggest European leagues combined. 

Arguably, Premier League clubs do not depend on earnings for their value and should be treated more like fine art, appraised for their rarity: A Leonardo da Vinci or a Jackson Pollock yields no income, but investors are still willing to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for one. Profits would certainly help, though.

Ultimately, US investment in the Premier League remains a bet on a future that has yet to arrive.

But the World Cup shows that when push comes to shove, the punters, for all their grumbling, will pay up.

If the 2026 tournament offers a future template for the sport (debatable, given the global repulsion that FIFA tends to inspire), then the Premier League is likely to be its first export destination.

Owners and incoming investors will smile; fans may not. At least spare us the half-time shows. Everyone has their limit. BLOOMBERG